December 6th
by Arrowsmith
Summary: UPDATED: A short sketch about an action and a reaction. This ‘diary’ angle is very wellworn, I know, but I wanted to try and pull off an openended descriptive piece rather than the usual narrative. It's really quite strange. Read the AN.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** The way in which Arnold and Helga behave here is not necessarily true to what their respective characters would normally do. However the point of the story is to suggest that an unusual action causes an unusual reaction; that is, if Arnold were to do something completely out of character for his moralistic young self, this would illicit in turn an uncharacteristic response from Helga. So I suppose this sketch is really about psychological cause and effect.  
I didn't find it necessary to set the scene or do any of the preliminary introductions for this reason. It's just one snapshot of a strange event in the life of Arnold and Helga.

_December 6th  
__Detention, 5:00 PM._

A pink book was lying on the table. Pulling it towards him, Arnold glanced at the cover and saw "Economics" printed neatly on the front, underneath which, in smaller, more flowery handwriting, were the words "Helga G. Pataki".  
Arnold idly flipped the pages of the book back and forth, feeling the soft paper under his fingers, and opened a page at random. The first line, written in very bright purple ink, leaped out at him.

_Dear Diary,  
Today I_

He shut the cover abruptly. Helga's diary. Helga's _diary?_ He smiled wryly to himself. It had never really occurred to him that Helga might have things to say, secrets she couldn't tell anyone else: things she'd have to hide. Helga was if nothing else, brazen. She didn't seem the type who'd furtively record her thoughts and feelings in a book.  
He glanced down at the diary. This was wrong. This was completely against all his principles.  
He paused, and opened the slim book again.

_Dear Diary,  
Today I tried (just for the heck of it) not to think about him while school was going on, but I really couldn't help it. He's everywhere, around corners, at the fountain, at his desk, everywhere I go, his face is there first. He smiles at someone else and I imagine he is smiling at me; he talks to someone else and I pretend it's me he's talking to. I can't escape. I don't want to escape!  
_

The paper was filled with tiny embellishments, little feminine cartoons and hearts and pink stars. Arnold traced them with the tip of his finger and felt like he was tracing a part of Helga in every miniature picture. So Helga…was in love.

He stared at the page and was suddenly and strangely struck by how fragile Helga seemed through these words. They were so carefully composed, and so jarringly honest. Who would have thought that someone like Helga could write so passionately about someone else? She seemed as if she hated everything and everyone around her, seemed completely bereft of emotion.

Arnold immediately reproached himself for the cruelty of that thought. Helga was only human after all, and it stood to reason that she had the same feelings as other people did.

_She's so mysterious, _He mused inwardly. Arnold had always been dimly aware of Helga's presence on the fringes of his life, but had never really considered her as a Member Of The Opposite Sex. Helga's face was not a beautiful one. Her features were not sweet, like Lila's, or sharp like Rhonda's, nor elongated like Sheena's. There was something almost aquiline in her face, in the way her skin stretched over the jawbone and extended in decisive right angles past her eyebrow. It suggested strength and a sort of – warm vitality, an _aliveness_. And those eyes…they were _intensely_ blue, as if she had forced the color up from the forgeries of her heart by sheer will power. Not beautiful certainly: but artistic, striking, fascinating.

Arnold shook himself out of his train of thought, wondering how he had come to contemplate Helga's eyebrows, when the door swung open. His stomach twisted into several uncomfortable knots. It was Helga.

Arnold hurriedly pushed the incriminating book away from him and busied himself with a pen.

"Arnold? Hey I was wondering if I could ta– " She stopped uncertainly as she saw the unnatural, forced position of his hands, and his red face. Arnold felt her eyes probe his own, knowing that guilt was written all over them, and felt sweat begin to prickle from the roots of his hair.

"What…what were you doing?"

Her eyes swept with something like fear to the desktop, and Arnold noticed, too late, that the diary was still open. Helga flinched as if someone had raised a hand to strike her.

"You read my diary."

"No…I wasn't…I don't…" Arnold stammered, but he had nothing to say.

She looked at him with more hurt than he could ever have imagined possible and he saw with sick dismay that tears were welling up in her large eyes.  
But even as he watched, her features changed, transformed, as if a veil had dropped smoothly over her face, blurring the lines together. The blueness of her eyes turned to expressionless ice. They burned into Arnold's forehead with unreadable, unblinking focus.

"I guess I deserved it, huh?" She smiled, slowly, like it cost a great deal of effort and pain to do so. "After all the stuff I've done to you…you must really hate me."  
Arnold tried to deny it but found that he could not speak for shame. His remorse tasted thick and bitter in his throat, choking him into silence.

She paused and thought for a moment, her gaze never leaving Arnold's face. She seemed to be concentrating on some thing internal, some internal struggle.

"Were you curious? Let me read the rest of it to you."  
Her short sentences felt to Arnold as sharp and raw as if she had slapped him with an open palm.

She drew the book out of his hands, and turned the page with shaking fingers. Arnold was more scared by her calculated calmness then he would have been had she yelled and raged at him; but he didn't know what to do. Frozen to his seat, he listened with growing anxiety to Helga's words, read in a flat tone, although her voice shook at times.

_  
"I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Every day it seems like I'm falling more and more into this thing I don't understand. I thought it was love once. Is it? It doesn't matter. I know is that he is the best thing that has ever happened to me…my Arnold."  
_

He heard her say his name in a faltering voice, saw her lips move to say it, but didn't believe it.

At the same time, a small unconscious part of his mind whispered to him:

_It's true, it's true, and you know it, Arnold…you know it…_

He shook his head and looked up, refusing to understand, and was immediately aghast by the starkness of Helga's face. She looked like she'd been carved from stone, freezing to the touch. He stared at his feet, unable to hold her cold gaze. This was more than surprising. This was _terrifying_. Who was this strange girl who loved and accused him with every screaming nerve in her being? She stood before him like a muse or a sphinx, a great and appalling death-angel that could kill with one glance. Arnold knew that something had broken inside of her: something that had been precious and jealously guarded.

He realized with an abrupt sense of horrible incongruity that he had finally succeeded in wounding Helga, after all the years of being pushed around by her; but he hadn't meant to hurt her in such a deep and untouchable place – not like this. Not like _this_.

A movement caught his eye and dragged him away from the whirling ocean of his own thoughts. She was turning, delicately, moving away from him as if shying away from a source of pain.

"I'm sorry," she said with heartbreaking irony, and closed the door.

RCA


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** So…I decided to write another chapter. Mostly because one reviewer left a rather ominous "This is good…so far" which spurred me to try and finish the story :D  
This is sort of the "in-between" chapter, so don't expect much out of it!

Hellerick, I hope you like this! I'll update again soon.

_December 6th  
Boarding House, 9:00 PM  
_

The fairground music was tinkling faintly. Arnold watched a carousel spin slowly with a half-lidded expression and started to walk towards it, sand warm and pleasantly crunching beneath his feet.  
What was it he had to remember?...Well, it didn't matter…Lila was waving to him from far, far away…there was Gerald, and Phoebe, in fact all his classmates waving and smiling in the vivid summer heat…and Helga, on a seat at the top, her dress as pink as candyfloss…

And suddenly there was Helga in front of him with her searing blue eyes, grasping his hand and asking earnestly, "Did you read it?" The carousel spun faster and faster, like a blade churning the sky into deep blackness that he could not tear his way out of––

Arnold sat up with a gasp. His digital clock (a new one – Sid had broken his old self-modelled alarm) blinked somberly: 9:00. It was still early.

He could hear someone that was probably Grandma clanking pots and pans distantly in the kitchen; the familiar sound calmed his shallow breathing. Arnold had been unable to relax, unable to rid himself of regret ever since, a few hours earlier, Helga had told him how she felt about him.

_No, that isn't quite right_, he thought. _I forced it out of her._

He exhaled unsteadily and kneaded his forehead with his knuckles.

_How could I have done it?_

He felt sick, and cruel; never had he been so disgusted with himself. He had always been the one in school to remind everybody what the 'right' thing to do. Why had he so easily given in to the temptation to look into Helga's diary?  
What had he been hoping to find?

Swathes of moonlight streaked across his room from its ceiling of glass. Arnold could see his pale reflection in it and could hardly bear to look at himself for shame.

As he sat on his bed thinking, another less audible voice asked a pressing, overwhelming question that needed to be answered.

_How could I have not known about--_

Arnold quickly shoved that thought out of his mind. He was not ready to deal with _that _just yet. Helga's feelings were too intense, too blindingly real, to think about or even believe right now. He closed his eyes but quickly opened them again as Helga's face, full of despair and sorrow, pierced his mind for the umpteenth time that day.

He heard the noises in the kitchen die down as his grandma retired. A toilet flushed somewhere in the building, and then all was silent. He sighed, and came to the unwilling conclusion that he had to talk to her – say something, call her, anything.

Arnold made his way downstairs to the phone, after digging Helga's number out of an old yearbook, and earnestly prayed that none of the boarders were awake. He had a feeling that this conversation was not going to be something he'd like discussed at breakfast tomorrow morning. He shifted nervously from one foot to another, hastily trying to fabricate a speech in his head._  
_

A listless female voice answered after several rings. "uhh…hello?"

"Hello? Can I speak to Helga please? This is Arnold, a…friend from school."

"Oh…I'm sorry, Archie…Helga's gone out––hold on just a sec, ok?" The receiver was muffled by an invisible hand.

"_Yeah B, I'll be there in a sec…stop yelling_…"  
"She said she was staying the night at Phoebe's place." Indistinct shouting. "_I'm on the phone, B…alright I'm coming…"_

There was some fumbling with the receiver.

"So, I'll tell her you called, Argus," Helga's mom said rather wearily. There was an abrupt click as she put the phone down.

"It's Arnold," Arnold said above the flat buzz of the dial tone, to no one in particular.

He stretched slowly and started to make his way down the corridor, reflecting. He had done the best he could; there was no way he could contact Helga until she came back from Phoebe's; and in a few days time he would call her and apologize and everything would be alright again.

Yet something was niggling at the back of his mind – something that didn't seem quite right, like when a door won't close properly or when a note is just a fraction sharp from the melody. True to that inexplicable way in which night paints the familiar world in unfamiliar and frightening shades, the boarding house corridor seemed longer and more twisted than usual. Arnold paced past each door, suddenly feeling very, very tired, and reached up to pull his bedroom stairs down.

_Helga is at Phoebe's, no problem._ Arnold closed his eyes tight, concentrating on the thought, letting it swim sluggishly around his mind.

At Phoebe's…no worries…Phoebe's….

Phoebe's…but…

Phoebe had gone to Japan two days ago, to meet her grandparents for Christmas.

Like a cold wind from a door that has unexpectedly been thrust open, Arnold understood. Helga was gone. She could not be anywhere other than Phoebe's: Arnold remembered too well, and with a disturbing twinge of pity, that Helga really didn't have any other friends. Which meant that she was somewhere out in the night, alone.

He turned around with one decisive movement and strode purposefully down the stairs, pajamas and all, only stopping to grab his jacket from the hall stand. He had to find her. This was his fault. He had to apologize, somehow, and bring her back home.

As he opened the door, Arnold stared out into the wintry night and paused at the doorframe. The wind blew in crisp, inhuman gusts around the weak streetlights; he listened to the screaming of its ghastly song and shuddered with some feeling that was not quite from the cold.

What could he possibly say to Helga that could make up for what had happened? And where would he look for her, anyway? The city was unwelcoming, vast. Helga could be anywhere.

His stomach clenched with livid determination as the image of Helga's eyes, filled with anguished tears, flashed into his head. Arnold closed the door carefully behind him, and walked into the dark.

I know the phone conversation was a bit messy but…well…I tried. I'll update faster if there are any reviews at all.

RCA


End file.
